Victoria and I have been working hard during our current transition period. If you haven’t heard the news, Victoria was accepted for a Kiva small business loan! We’re hoping funding will happen soon, and are already in the process of getting her own workspace setup in her own home. This is an incredible opportunity for her, and for all of us really, because we expect this transition to mean lots more batts for everyone.

Victoria, seen here with the ever-trusty Cardzilla

Sunday, 10 December 2017, will mark one month since we relaunched production! What’s been particularly exciting for me about it all is that, whereas years ago, Victoria was my employee, now we’re an entrepreneurial partnership. With her having her own equipment and workspace, she’ll be earning more on each batt she makes, and getting to spread her designing wings as well with a range of Victoria’s Choice (well, we haven’t settled on a name for her product line yet) fibers from time to time in addition to her production work on my designs.

We have been testing logistics and all kind of internal things, including Victoria borrowing my trusty Cardzilla on a short-term basis! Victoria worked on Cardzilla for a year or so in the Stringtopia days, and has been working on Cardzilla since we started working together again. To say she’s familiar with Cardzilla is an understatement.

I didn’t want to loan Cardzilla out long term for multiple reasons (I admit: mostly because he’s kinda my baby and I’m on record as saying “I might grab Cardzilla on the way out the door if the house were on fire”) or I would have done so from the beginning, but when Victoria’s Kiva Small Business Loan became a reality, I decided a one month loan would be perfect. Not only will it give her the ability to produce more batts from her home and spend more time with family, but borrowing Cardzilla will allow her to figure out her own workspace logistically so the transition from Cardzilla to her own brand new carder will be seamless for us, and for our batt lovers.

As a result of this transition time the upcoming batt batch we wanted to release this week didn’t quite make our self-imposed Friday deadline. However, with us working hard over the weekend, the new batch will be listed on Monday, December 11, to kick off the second month of our re-launched batt production! The theme for our upcoming batt batch is Banned Books! We’ll have unique fiber blends in colorful tributes to some of our favorite banned books: The Color Purple, Leaves of Grass, Fahrenheit 451, and a few others. Do you have some colors or titles you’d love to see? Let us know — this might not be our last Banned Books tribute series!

Classic Abby Batts

Victoria will be working from home on Cardzilla over the weekend to finish up this batch, so make sure you stay tuned for all the updates on getting her getting her space up and ready for some mass production, along with sneak peeks of the blends in this batch!

Life’s A Beach is the blue with teal and green at left, but they looked so good side by side with Tequila Sunrise (orange, at right) that we couldn’t resist using this photo.70% Superfine Merino30% Hand-Dyed Tussah Silk30 grams each$9.95 ea10 available

So right about a week ago, Victoria Crossman, who was my first-ever production right hand at my old brick and mortar studio got ahold of me and let me know she had some space in her schedule.

Abby and Victoria in the middle of the Great Production Room Emergency Sort And File

It probably won’t surprise anyone who knows her, or who remembers my studio, that I leapt at the chance to have her come help me out with some stuff. For starters, she attacked the chaos that has been my production room here at home, sorting everything (because she already knew what it all was, and I could say things like “separate out batt materials from class supplies,” and she already knew) and setting up two carding workstations, one for the Strauch and one for the Pat Green.

That made us ready to push through batt and roving production like we used to back in the day. And then we got to doing that.

So for our first week of ramping back up, we managed to do 1 Batt Bar Batt, 16 Fresh Rovings, and a whopping 76 Classic Abby Batts. We’re so impressed with ourselves right now it’s almost cute.

Now, in fairness, we used to do that in two days, so we’re a little slow still. And also, those days were longer than the ones we’ve got right now. But I have to tell you: it’s amazing what it’s like to get back to work with someone I’ve already worked with, who’s already trained up and skilled up, and who already knows the big picture thinking and objectives and goal-setting and all that sort of thing.

Once I knew we’d be able to do some really solid production, though, I had to accelerate my plans to retool web sites and relaunch an online store and all kinds of stuff like that. I’d figured on spending a big chunk of next year trying to find and train someone to work with me on production, and it was all kinds of overwhelming for all kinds of reasons, ranging from work room chaos to finding someone and training them up.

So, what I’ve done this past week includes:

– make a “First Dibs Fibers” section that’s exclusive to Patreon members for the first 2 days
– make a “General Fiber Sales” section that’s where everything goes after Patreon folks have had their first crack at it.
– install a cart I thought I’d like, broke this web site, got it unbroken, and started reassessing the cart solution while keeping the First Dibs and General Fiber sections sorted and working.

Anyway, if you’d like to follow along with production and have insider access while we’re doing it — hear about what we’re making, see advance pictures, catch the occasional livestream as we’re able to get that sorted — we’re doing it on Discord chat and the Patreon feed. Once we’ve got a few tech things sorted out, we’ll probably open up Discord server membership more broadly, keeping some channels patron-only, but I’m trying to keep things moving at a pace where I can keep up and sort out hassles as they happen before they become entrenched.

Do expect to see redesign work going on for this web site for the next little while. Picture one of those early animated GIFs of a worker digging. Any time you’re working on a system that’s been up and running for over 11 years, you’re probably going to break something if you touch it.

Dear Ed,
You would have turned 71 today, man.
As for me, welp. I’m 44. Where were you when you were 44? That seems like the sort of thing you’d tell me if I called you on your birthday. Well, damn, I was 17. So we were living in Tsukuba then, where we were when you got that middle of the night call about your father’s stroke. Who was on the other end? I never knew. I remember waking up though, when the phone rang, but you were there before me. I remember sitting with you while you cried, halfway around the world and 14 hours in the future from your dad while he lay in some hospital. “My poor dad,” you choked out. I felt the same. My poor dad.
But that year you were 44, well, I guess I got to thinking about you less and less. I was restless and angry and frustrated and wanting to be the boss of my own destiny, not trapped in boring-ass Japan with my boring damn family and the only relief from the boredom was a day of ikebana and o-cha once per week. Science city my ass, I hate this gaijin ghetto, I remember yelling when I wasn’t sullen and resentful. I could be at home making $3.75 an hour. I could have shit to do. No, I don’t like the other gaijin kid. I am so sick of being member number three of the fabulous flying Franquemonts, here, stay watching the luggage while Chris and Molly go to the bathroom for the umpteenth time and Ed goes to scout what there is for airport food, bla bla bla, I’m over it.
When you were the age I am now, so much changed. You had playgrounds to build and Chris had that gaijin researcher gig. I went off to college. Molly stayed with Chris in Japan and you were back and forth. Sometimes I’ve tried to explain how it worked, that I moved out of my parents’ house by leaving Japan and rebelliously living… In my parents’ house in Ithaca. It’s a Franquemont thing. They wouldn’t understand. And it that don’t sound 1989 as fuck, I don’t know what does.
Well anyway, so I have also arrived at that far future time in a person’s life when their firstborn is all grown up. Goddamn, I wish you could see him. I wish you could hear him. I wish that just once, just once, you could hear him at the jazz trombone. I wouldn’t even ask for the time for him to get to have long talks with you about music. Just for one time where you got to go hear him and then he got to see how much you loved it and how proud you were.
Hey listen man, I can’t make this a long letter, even though I want to and there’s so much to say. So fucking much. The years keep piling on and actually I’m glad they do but… Yeah I really can’t do it, I mean like physically. I’m gonna be fine and all, but I will tell ya, for a bit there I was afraid I was gonna be really precocious again in yet another way I never asked for. Anyway, while I’m writing this I keep crying, and then I have to blow my nose, and that hurts like a sonofabitch right now because a week ago I was the one laying in a bed in a surgical oncology inpatient unit. I don’t have cancer, but man, I just survived some science fiction shit. I would now make a much more interesting mummy. I hope the future archaeologists don’t think I got rid of an ovary and some other bits in a gendered stage of life rite of passage.

I’ll do what I can to contribute facts to the primary sources the future will need. I’m still concerned about the longevity of humanity’s digital record, though. Also I think literacy is going to become an esoteric fringe skill in my kid’s lifetime. And I wish you could have seen the Internet slap fights over whether it’s more progressive if the first black president gets replaced by a woman or a Jewish dude. And yeah, really, Trump and a couple of dudes with Latino last names who even argued about which one of ’em didn’t even speak Spanish, and they’re republicans.
See? I can not dwell. I can mostly just not freak out when shit gets heavy. You can still count on me to actually watch the whole family’s supplies for a year of living in the field, I swear, and now I’m old enough I think it’s funny how much I resented that all those years ago when you were my age. One thing hard about all this is now I’m down to just 15 more times I can say “when you were my age.” I can’t fucking believe it’s 12 years since the last birthday you ever had. I’m glad you were out of the hospital that day, and long enough that we got to go have an ice cream sundae.
Saw a news story last night about a trial cancer treatment breakthrough something something 94% got legit better using their own immune system to fight blood cancer type something and I kinda broke. Not broke down. Just couldn’t hear it. Couldn’t parse it. Sometimes I get so mad about how close in time you were to probably having lots more time. I know that’s one reason why you told me, while you lay dying, not to let anger win. And you’re right. Also, man, you should see the scar I’m gonna have from these staples. This summer I’m totally gonna wear something midriff baring and show it off, because it’s gonna be damned impressive. And yes, I promise I’ll stay on top of all my checkups.
I usually find you a song for your birthday, usually a version of Farther Along. But this year I think I’ll just say hey, these guys were amazing in concert. If I lived in Ithaca I’d have seen them at the State Theater.

Also I wrote this while post on a touchscreen tablet. Everybody has them now. You would have loved and hated the, just like I do.
Man, I miss you. And I wish you could have seen this. It was in 2010. And now everybody calls him Ed, by the way. You’d probably know him on first sight even though you haven’t seen him since he was in kindergarten.
I love you, Ed. I miss you all the time. And yeah. Still double on your birthday.

Well, it’s been two years now. I guess on the bright side, when I woke up, it wasn’t the morning of the first snow. Maybe that’s not the bright side, because the first snow will probably make me cry just like this anniversary of your death does.

Chris and Abby, 1972

Chris and Abby, summer 1973

You taught me to swim there, and you know there’s nobody for generations in your family who doesn’t know exactly where this photo was taken. There are so many things I meant to ask you about that place. I thought there’d be more time. Why couldn’t there have been more time? Lots of people get more time with their moms. Yeah, I know, there are also people who don’t get as much. None of that is the point, though. It’s like when Ed was dying, and he said it wasn’t as tragic as if it was happening to a young mom with little kids, and I told him he was wrong, because whoever that person might be, and however sad that story might be, it wasn’t about my father. I don’t think he’d thought about it that way. But you had. He saw what I meant, but you already knew.

I want to have a tantrum, like a toddler, like a teenager. It’s not fair. I hate you being dead. Nothing I can say about it is really any more than that. I can say it lots of ways, with lots of words, but they all just mean the same thing.

Chris, Molly, and Ed, 1975

I hate that you’re all gone. It’s all too soon. It’s all too sad. It’s all too hard. It makes me cry. I hate crying. You know that. Everybody knows that. So let’s just have a song instead and we can pretend it’s the song we’re crying about.

I know there are so many tragedies so much vaster, and that I am no orphaned baby daughter, but rather, a full-grown woman who oughta be bringing in the crops before they are left standing, rotted, in November. But man, that sure is a wide, muddy river, and if you were still here, we could talk for hours about rivers of tears in cross-cultural symbolism.

Have you been waiting to start learning to spin until you decide what kind of tool or equipment you want? Wait no longer! Now you can make yarn using just a pencil!

Or, you know, any kind of stick, really. Plus, it’s not really “now you can,” because people have been making yarn for at least 34,000 years, so it isn’t really news. I just thought that line sounded cute.

I’ve been seeing a thing going around lately that says: Happy Mother’s Day, including to dads who are playing the role. I get that the intent for folks who are sharing that is to be inclusive to all parents in a primary child-raising role, and I love that sentiment, but I have to say: this makes me sad for lots of reasons. The biggest is: so now we’re telling fathers that the only way they can interact parentally with their children is by “playing the role” of mother? That if they are nurturing or caring or take care of the household, now they’re mothers? By the way, what does this make mothers who work outside the home? I could go on and on, but frankly, it still shocks me how far we seem to have regressed in terms of perceived gender role stuff, just in my lifetime.

I’d like to give a shout out to my own mother. She never really went in for Mother’s Day. The year when I was 8, I decided I would make her breakfast in bed, and made sure I was up before either of my parents to do it myself. I was off to a pretty decent start, standing on a chair so I could easily reach the electric frying pan on the counter. Except… there I was cooking bacon when I must have bumped it or something because one of its feet was off the counter and it started to tip and fall. I caught it, and put it firmly back on the counter… then screamed, because in so doing, I burnt the heck out of my hand. My parents came running and ruined everything. They RUINED it! I was making Mother’s Day breakfast because I was going to do it, me, by myself, and then I make one little mistake and yell and they wouldn’t even let me finish. It was actually quite the little scene. And after that my mom always tried to make clear she didn’t wanna do anything for some Hallmark Holiday anyway.

My mom felt guilty. I could, I swear, *feel* it. At the time I thought that was stupid. But after I became a mom, I understood new things, viscerally. Like that she didn’t feel guilty that I burned my hand trying to cook bacon for her, she felt accountable and responsible for everything that ever happened to me or that I ever did. And then she spent the rest of her life dancing with that: stepping in, stepping out, turning her back, going around the outside, laughing and smiling more than anything else, until I finally broke free and ran off to be my own woman without her there to run cold water on my hand if I burned myself. And that morning, she could see that coming, and know she could never have stopped me from ever getting burnt, and all those things you think when your kid is hurt. And then there she was, feeling all of that, and I’m arguing with her that she should stop trying to run my hand under the cold water so I could finish breakfast, and she’s staying calm forcibly holding my blistered hand under cold running water and my dad says “Enough about the bacon! It’s fine.” I didn’t understand my mom as much before I was one. I couldn’t empathize with her. I didn’t get it. And I’m sorry. But I know she knew: I truly couldn’t have understood then.

After I became a mother, I would call my mother every year on this day, and apologize for something, like right now, when I’m apologizing for ever having thought, in my childhood and my teens, that she just wanted to control my life and ruin everything. I know she didn’t. She did the most amazing job ever of helping her daughter grow into the woman I am. I am ever in awe. There’s no sufficient gratitude.

There’s also no replacement, and sometimes, no solace for that.

I miss you, Chris. And thank you for all the times you said things to me just like what I said in the first paragraph. Thanks for always making me think. Thanks for encouraging me to just say things. Thanks for teaching me to argue, even if you might have wished I did it less. And thanks for teaching me my life didn’t have to be ruled by anyone else’s notions of what girls or boys, mothers or fathers, men or women, are supposed to do. The least I can do for you (on a day you never set much stock in) is to keep putting those questions out into the world.

40 years ago today, I was over at our great-grandmother’s house, and she had a few friends over sitting on the couch. I got to watch TV, and Planet of the Apes was on. You always hated when I told you that was something I remembered so vividly about the day, so, you know, as a big sister, I gotta make sure I don’t miss it in this letter.

Chris Franquemont (holding Molly) and Ed Franquemont, 1975

The phone call came in the early afternoon; the little brother I’d been anticipating was a little girl who weighed 5 and a half pounds. “I wonder what her name is?” everyone started wondering, because clearly it wouldn’t be Little Raoul, which is what you’d been called when you were a bump in my mother’s belly. Everyone sitting around thought Grace sounded like the perfect name.

Ed came and got me, and told everyone your name was Molly Anne, and then he and I went to the hospital to see you. We had chocolate chip banana bread that Barbara had baked, wrapped in tinfoil, and when we got to the hospital, our mother came out and sat with us, but not you. “I don’t have a knife,” my father said, unwrapping the tinfoil package. He broke off pieces of chocolate chip banana bread for everyone. Mine was from the end, which I liked, but it was also shaped like a broken foot, which I didn’t like. I was about to bring this up when my mother said, “Here she comes!” and helped me stand on a chair to look through the window behind us.

A lady dressed in white wheeled up a cart to the window, and smiled. And that was the first time I saw you. You were tiny, and red, with fuzzy red hair, and you were crying. I felt bad about being upset about my weirdly-shaped banana bread. I thought maybe you would like a piece and might not cry anymore if you had some, but you were on the other side of a window, and even then, inside a cart. “She’s very small,” our mother said, “so she has to be in the incubator for a while.”

Abby and Molly, 1975

I was so proud of my new baby sister. It made me mad that you couldn’t come home and play right away. I just wanted you and me to get on with the lives I’d daydreamed for us as your much wiser, more mature, and more experienced sister (that’s right, I was three years old, and I knew STUFF).

Tracey Cain and Molly Franquemont, 1978

Having a little sister was never like I expected it to be. Being a big sister wasn’t either. And you upstaged me at every turn. You were cuter, more charming, had better people skills. I’d make a friend who’d come over to visit me, and then they’d spend the whole visit playing with you and I’d have to give up and go read a book. I didn’t know, until later, that you always thought much the same, and struggled with things like that English teacher wondering why you didn’t want to read Kafka in seventh grade like your big sister. You always looked good in dresses, and in pictures, and I never did. But you always thought everyone could see how many times your nose had been broken and envied me for not being accident-prone.

Molly, in 1979, enjoying having her hair styled by Grandma Claudia

1983, Riobamba Ecuador, where even Molly’s school uniform cardigan managed to always look fancier than mine

Molly and Abby, 1986

Molly, 1990, Tsukuba-shi, Ibaraki-ken, Japan

Molly, 1992, Ithaca High School Lacrosse

Molly, 1993, with her painting of Grandma Claudia

Mama Molly and her daughter Quilla, Christmas 1996

I wish we knew where you were, today, when you should be having a party for your fortieth birthday. Forty years is no shit. I’m your big sister, so I know, because I got there first. Or, well, I guess maybe “at all.” It’s been more than 2 years since you disappeared, and with everything that went down, maybe I should be trying to just use phrases like “my sister was” more often. But it’s hard, because… somehow I can’t help thinking it’s all a mistake and I can’t possibly not have a baby sister anymore. Deep down I know you’re gone, because you would have moved heaven and earth to be here with the rest of us these past 2 years. But I can’t close the door on the idea that maybe, just maybe… well, I don’t know what to hope, sometimes, you know? I don’t hope you’re trapped in someone’s basement dungeon, but I also don’t hope you’re dead and never to be found, so maybe the basement dungeon would be better. Maybe I should hope you have amnesia and are having a wonderful time somewhere. But that sounds weird too. I guess I hope you’re at peace, and I wish you were here, and I wish I thought we’ll ever find out.

I miss you. I’m thinking of you a lot lately. Sometimes it sucks being the last one left here. Heck, mostly it does. I know I used to bitch constantly about how I just wanted you to go away and leave me alone, but I never meant it like this. I just wish so much that I could call you up and say happy birthday. I wish you were still around to piss me off, because that’s definitely a little sister’s job and I kinda got used to it after all.

Lots of us miss you.

Be well, whereever and however you may be. You are not forgotten. Especially not on your birthday.

Hi! I’m a double treadle 24″ Jensen “Space Saver” tall castle wheel with finials (sometimes called half-spokes). I was lovingly made by Jerry Jensen in 2001, from cherry wood with a walnut stain. I’m signed and numbered — JMJ No 5, 10/24/2001.

Thinking about buying a used spinning wheel? Doing so can be a great way to save money, but alas, it isn’t always easy to find a used wheel in good condition. If the seller is a spinner, then your odds are pretty good, but sadly, people who don’t spin can’t necessarily even tell if something actually is a spinning wheel or not. So, if you’re looking for your first wheel, my usual recommendation is to not buy a used wheel from someone who isn’t a spinner.

Okay… but what if you really, really want to? That’s where today’s video comes into play. I’ll show you my family’s old great wheel, an antique flax wheel with some issues that aren’t dealbreakers, and a modern wheel in good condition.